


The Mer Prince

by Jessa



Series: One-shots and Drabbles [12]
Category: Reylo - Fandom, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, finnlo - Fandom, finnreylo - Fandom
Genre: Dark!Rey, F/M, Fluff, Happily Ever After, M/M, NSFW, The Little Mermaid AU, True Love, anal play (with a tentacle), earth shaking sea-crashing romance, finnlo fairy-tale, finnlo kiss, fluffy moralising about love, reylo dub-con, sea creatures - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-08 19:04:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16435097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jessa/pseuds/Jessa
Summary: In response toDay 5: Sea Creaturesfor Reylo Monster Week 2018.





	The Mer Prince

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leoba](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leoba/gifts).



> I hope you all enjoy this! I really enjoyed writing it. The Little Mermaid was my very favourite story and Disney film growing up. It’s fun to subvert it now I can see all its racist/sexist/heterocentric flaws! ;)
> 
> I also took a lot from the Hans Christian Anderson story so this is a mash-up or a crossover or whatever it is (it just is what it is, and I just hope you like it!)
> 
> This is for leoba, who has gifted me so many stories! With this one I can start to even the score!

The Mer Prince raised his lovely head above the roil of the water. At the edge of the cove, where the bay met the mouth of the ocean, the young merman looked out curiously at the tri-masted sailing ship and yearned to be nearer. Light still graced the evening sky, which was building quickly with dark clouds, but the sun’s upper arc still nudged just above the horizon, belying the true danger of the oncoming storm.

Awash for a final moment with the colours of pink and gold, Ben lingered there briefly before slipping silently beneath the surface to swim closer. When he reached the hull, the Mer Prince swam along until he could peer through the circular glass windows at the humans inside the cabin. Fine gentlemen and ladies dressed in lavish fabrics. He yearned for such things from the human world, things like garments, which he ached to feel the dry textures of.

The humans on board the vessel were cheerful. They seemed to be celebrating something. As the Mer Prince watched them dance and laugh one of them caught his eye, but not because of his beauty - although he was well beyond the realm of handsome, as dark as Ben was fair - but for a sadness the young merman thought he recognised as a quality also in himself. This beautiful human, who they were calling  _Prince Finn,_  was not like the others. He was not cheerful. Was Finn a lonely prince? As lonely as Ben?

But the Mer Prince could not dwell for long on the feeling. At that moment a clap of thunder rent the air and the ship’s bell began an urgent peal as the men and women shouted. They unfurled the ship’s sails but not before lightning struck the mast and it snapped asunder, catching the canvas alight. The storm was already upon the humans and fire was upon the ship.

The ocean swelled impossibly then and the young merman watched as the human prince fled to the deck. Afraid for him, but also for himself, the Mer Prince sought the safety of the waves. From a distance he watched the ship roll. Prince Finn tumbled and disappeared beneath the rocking sea. Ben sensed he was in grave danger as the ocean lashed and the storm reached the peak of its rage.

Swimming quickly across the surface, rapidly littering with debris from the toppled ship, the Mer Prince searched. At last his desperate eyes caught upon the light-coloured fabric of the human prince’s shirt. He was flailing, struggling to keep his tired head above the water that washed relentlessly across him, threatening to sink him, as with every heavy stroke he made his arms reached lower and lower until his head dipped beneath the surface and Ben could see him no more.

The Mer Prince wasted no time. He swam to the prince, sank his arms beneath his shoulders and hauled his tiring body upwards. Their faces broke the surface but the eyes of the human prince were closed and his head was slack. Ben pulled him to the shore and lay him down on his back on the sand when they reached it. He placed his cheek to the mouth of the prince and felt his warm breath as the rain teemed down and panicked human voices called out in the distance.

Ben glanced across his muscled shoulder and saw the humans running. Quickly, knowing his time with the prince was over, that he must leave before the fish eaters saw him, the Mer Prince took one last look at the beautiful, lonely human prince, surprised to find his eyes open. They were dark and lovely and, as Ben gazed, Prince Finn reached a weak hand towards his cheek and touched his shaking fingers gently to it. The young merman caught them for the briefest moment. Then he turned and dashed once more for the safety of the sea.

* * *

The Sea Witch unrolled her thick tentacles, extending each of the eight. Carefully, from the rock crevice, she slowly withdrew her soft body from the cave. She’d been waiting for the Mer Prince, sensing he’d find her when eventually his pining soul grew too much to bear and he defied the wishes of the Sea King to marry within his own kind. They always sought her Dark magick at that point, the poor unfortunate creatures who came to her for help, so riddled by the sickness of unrequited love.

And the Sea Witch always helped them. All of them. Rey was merciful and they were just so pathetically weak. She couldn’t help but feel sorry for them, so quick as they were to give in to the Darkness inside themselves - desire - and forget that true love was not something you could buy, barter or bargain for. True love was only ever earned.

But she never disclosed that in the beginning, and she would be especially careful not to divulge it now to this one; the mouth-watering son of the Sea King would make the most charming addition to her little garden once his pathetic fantasy crashed down around his adorable ears, as inevitably it would. She’d ensure it. Rey could picture it now: the withered ghost of the young merman’s chiseled torso locked forever inside her trove.

Sometimes the Sea WItch enjoyed returning them to their true forms just to look upon them again, and remind herself of just how powerful she was. How beautiful they once were and how pitiful still. Their continued misery only served to add to just how rapturous they remained to look upon - especially the mermen - and she knew she would enjoy this one particularly.

But for now she was prepared to play the game with the Mer Prince. To play the compassionate friend, the benevolent savior, to feign unmeasurable sympathy for his plight, which of course no one else in the history of time or space had ever struggled through, and she would ensure he felt that: special, understood, cared about in this cold, cruel water-logged world beneath the surface of the ocean, alone with the yearnings of his tragic and love-struck heart.

“So you desire for the human Prince Finn to fall desperately in love with you?” the Sea Witch fathomed, lurking her way across the floor of her cave as the Mer Prince recoiled from her snaking arms. “Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

Rey enjoyed this part the most. The tease. She circled him, serpentining around his half-man half-fish form, devouring his palpable fear as her eyes drank in his musculature. The impossibly broad shoulders on him which betrayed his royal ancestry, the enormous pectorals and the rippling stomach leading deliciously to the place where the firm muscles of his human groin disappeared in a sea-snail trail of dark scales just beneath the feathery, crimson-coloured fins at the hilt of his jet black tail.

“Yes,” the Mer Prince whispered, twisting away from her gaze in a futile effort to conceal himself from it.

The Sea Witch wrapped one of her tentacles languorously around his waist, the bioluminescence in her cave reflecting off the scales at the edges of his inguen. She trailed the tip of a second suckered arm across them, feeling him shiver beneath her touch as she snaked her limb further around to the back of him and teased at the place where his fish sex hid, just beneath his anus.

“Then you’ve got to pay the toll,” the Sea Witch murmured, wrapping the first arm more firmly around the slender arcs of his burgeoning human hips, pulling him closer in order to study his beautiful face.

The dark locks of Ben’s hair, suspended in the lazy deep-ocean current, framed his skin which was fairer than snow. His dark eyes were wide and frightened of hers. His roseate lips were parted slightly and there was an unmistakable tremble afflicting the lower one. The Sea Witch brought the tip of another tentacle to that trembling mouth of his and touched it softly as the Mer Prince quivered inside her grip, unable to prevent the advance.

“Your voice for legs. You will have three days. And if, before the sun sets at the end of the third day, you have indeed managed to make the human prince give you the kiss of true love, you may keep your legs and your lover.”

“And if I don’t?”

"You belong,” the Sea Witch menaced, “To me. And nothing can save your soul, not even your father, the Sea King.”

Rey thrust a quill and a scroll in front of Ben.

“Sign it.”

The Mer Prince paused, staring wistfully at the contract with conflict in his heart, unsure.

“You want,” he murmured, bringing his hands to his throat, “My voice?”

“It’s just a trifle, a token, really, you won’t even miss it...”

“But without my voice, how can I...?”

“My dear, sweet child, you’ll have your looks.”

The Mer Prince felt one last pull of doubt in the pit of his tight stomach before he swallowed. Then, remembering the sight of the human prince looking sadly out across the ocean, with Prince Finn in his heart Ben scribbled his name as the Sea Witch began a low, mirthless and malicious laugh before she disappeared again inside her sea cave.

* * *

Pain tore at the Mer Prince, from his groin to the crimson fluke of his fishtail. Gone were his gills and his lungs burned fiercely inside his chest as Ben kicked desperately for the surface. As the young merman’s new human body screamed for air he remembered the struggles of the human prince, when he had tumbled into the stormy sea, and how ferociously Finn had fought to keep his head above the waves before Ben had saved him.

Now also possessing the body of a man - made for land not ocean - the Mer Prince kicked for what he knew would be the final time as a level of weariness unknown to him in water gripped his flailing mammalian physique. Convinced he would sink and drown, the young merman felt all hope leave him in that moment, before somehow his head breached the surface of the sea and the cool chill of the early morning breeze caressed his grateful face.

The Mer Prince flicked back his dark hair and gulped in lungfuls of air, but relief was short-lived as he floundered above the sea. His fishtail was gone and his limbs felt leaden as he struggled towards the shoreline. Somehow the edges of his newly-formed feet connected with the sinking sands of the shallows, but as his new knees bore his full human weight they buckled woefully beneath it.

Scrabbling forwards on hands and feet Ben left the buoyancy of water. He struggled against gravity up the wet sand until he collapsed, just beyond the lapping waves, physically exhausted.

What had he been thinking? It was impossible. His heart ached not just from the longing that drove him to the Sea Witch, but also the water that had trapped itself inside his new human lungs when his body had transformed.

The Mer Prince rolled to his back, encumbered on the sand by his new humanity. The glare of the overcast sky burned his retinas when he tried to look up so he closed his eyes and turned away, longing for the comfort of darkness, the light too bright.

Rey had tricked him. The young merman was never meant to succeed in such a selfish endeavour and he should have known it; his father had tried to warn him. Ben should have known the Sea Witch was only ever out to make a trophy of his withered body; to exact revenge on the Sea King, who had banished her long ago from the kingdom for embracing Dark magick. Self-blame rose in the Mer Prince, as did a loathing he already felt for himself. 

He was born into a lineage - a destiny - he didn’t want; the expectation to rule with some mermaid at his side. Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes as he lay on the sand, naked and still damp from the ocean.

The young merman thought then that perhaps it really would be better - an eternal place in the Sea Witch’s garden - than a life lived without the love of the man he had fallen so hopelessly in love with; without the human Prince Finn. A single tear left the eye of the Mer Prince as he lay defeated on the sand, hope lost and full of regret. Vaguely, through his thick layers of misery, he felt it run the course of his cheek before a strange shadow crossed him.

Something worked its way beneath the young merman’s sorrowful head, and raised it. Something else pressed to the surface of his skin, the furthest plot of the tear’s path. It caught it softly and wiped it away before warmth was a blanket about his bare human body and the Mer Prince no longer felt cold in the morning air. Something dry and soft brushed at his forehead, pushing the wet, salt-riddled hairs away from his face, smoothing them.

Afflicted as he was by the Sea Witch’s terribly dishonest spell, designed to do nothing more than fool him, the Mer Prince heard a voice he’d prior only ever imagined. A sound his dreams were filled by since the fateful night of the storm.

“I remember you,” the young merman heard the human prince murmur. “I thought you were a dream, but here you are on the shoreline.”

The Mer Prince opened his eyes. Prince Finn’s dark, gentle gaze looked down upon him with nothing less than gratitude and love. And then the human prince leant in and pressed his lips to Ben, the young merman who saved his life in the storm that sent him overboard.

“You came back to me,” Prince Finn whispered, as Ben heard then the fading ire of the Sea Witch, through the closing bond of her wicked spell as the Dark magick worked and it sealed a new fate.

On the shore of the cove, beyond the surface, the Mer Prince returned the kiss of Prince Finn - the kiss of true love - and it strengthened Ben’s new human body as the world changed then for the better.


End file.
